Don’t post it to Twitter if you don’t want it used… [Updated 05/12/15]

At the company where I work an individual that claims to be a Professor has sent us a ‘Cease and Desist’ letter. In the letter the individual claims that one of our customers is using their their Twitter messages without their permission. They demand we delete the customer’s data immediately and provide them all of the customer’s contact information. I’m not sure what the laws say over in the UK where this individual is based but we will obviously not violate our Privacy Policy and reveal client information to a third party just because they demand it.

Regarding the claims of misusing their Twitter content after a cursory investigation I found that the Twitter Terms of Service does specifically state:

The Content you submit, post, or display will be able to be viewed by other users of the Services and through third party services and websites (go to the account settings (http://twitter.com/settings/security) page to control who sees your Content). You should only provide Content that you are comfortable sharing with others under these Terms.

I did want to reach out to this individual and point this out but after reviewing the case I have evidence that this individual may not be interested in facts. I believe that regardless of what I send them they’re only going to continue to escalate the situation by becoming more threatening and rude. One example that makes me question the stability of the individual is that they forwarded in spam message for ‘TrackR‘, a neat product imho, and said that they see email sent to our organization was “sent along to various organizations for ‘tracking’.”

Our organization has no affiliation to “TrackR” and had this individual even conducted cursory investigation, such as a Google Search, prior to jumping to such conclusions they would have seen that it was just a spam message trying to sell the ‘TrackR’ product.

This individual is threatening to be damaging to our organization because we will not simply bow to their demands. While I could name them here and bring attention to their activities I’m not going to name this person as I do not wish to cause them any undue stress or harm. Maybe perhaps they will come across this post one day and realize that the crusade they’re on really is for naught as the content they share to Twitter is available to others for use under those Terms.

This individual has sent in half a dozen emails all saying similar things with new/different threats. Dear Professor: Please quit harassing us. K. Thx. Bai.

Cease and Desist… With terrible grammar.Cease and Desist – Part 2TrackR Spam Message

Update – 05/12/15

It has come to my attention that ‘The Professor’ believes we’re out to extort him for something. It seems this individual believes that they can pay for our client’s information, to remove the client’s data without their consent, or for me to pull down this post. I’m not entirely sure how things work in London but I can tell you that we do not extort anybody nor are we going to modify our client’s data or provide you their information because you ask or even because you offer to pay.

I am now being accused of ‘cyber extortion’ for documenting our interactions with this individual.

‘The Professor’ has made it clear that he has seen this post and wishes for it to be pulled down. If he had read this post in it’s entirety he would see that we are not going to bow to his demands nor do we wish to further communicate with him.

Professor: Move on with your life and this post will fall into the past on its own. This post only exists due to your persistence at harassing the organization I work for. If you wish for this page to fall from Page 1 of Google [as per your claims] I suggest you move on to your next target for intimidation. Eventually this post will lose its ranking as comments are not made and the post is not updated.
The longer you continue to harass me or the organization that I work for the longer I will continue to update this post with all of your unbalanced assumptions and demands.